This is happening at the same time Gallup finds libertarian voters outnumber conservatives, liberals, and populist voters. Do the math, reformers!

With the South Carolina primaries and Nevada caucuses in plain view, there seems little to no question that 2016's key interlopers, Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, are still a problem for their respective "parties" (I use scare quotes because neither of them is really a member of either group).

This reality is causing a huge problem for the parties' established candidates (that is, politicians who are clearly part and parcel of the Republican or Democratic clubs, whether they pretend to be insiders or outsiders). I totally understand why not just Hillary Clinton but the Democratic Party operation has got to be shitting a brick over Sanders' popularity and staying power. Same goes for Republican types, even those (such as the fellows at National Review) who rarely have a kind word for "establishment" GOP representatives. What the hell is going on, already? A fake Republican and a fake Democratic are not just threatening "real" partisans but absolutely kicking ass!

And get this: The parties' meltdowns are occuring at the same time that Gallup is finding that libertarian-minded voters now outnumber conservatives, liberals, and populists (more on that below).

As I argue in a new Daily Beast column, Sanders and Trump aren't leading their party in bold new directions. No, the candidates are making the parties look bad because they are presenting something close to the distilled, Platonic essences the Democratic and Republican platforms.

Bernie Sanders…is causing equal levels of discomfort among the Democratic Party establishment by admitting that he's not really a socialist. He just wants to give away a ton of free stuff, most notably education, health care, and retirement but also paid family leave and a laundry list of whatever else he can think of. When he got into the race, he refused to apologize for being a tried-and-true socialist, which he redefined later as being a "democratic socialist" and now characterizes as simply wanting to import the very best Denmark has to offer before it becomes even more like the United States….

And of course, Sanders has no realistic way of paying for any of his new spending. He just waves away the bill for such new spending, suggesting that one way or another, he'll get the 1 percent to pay for it. Nobody buys that.

And then there's Trump, whose likelihood of actually winning the GOP nomination increases with each horrible thing he seems to say.

For all of the he's-not-one-of-us bluster against Trump, he does a passable impersonation of a National Review—style conservative Republican for most of us. He is by his own words strongly against immigration (which NR's editors call a "defining" issue for today's right-wingers). He is obsessed with displays of masculinity and dismisses opponents as "weak" and as pussies. His trucker-hat promise to "Make America Great Again" is simply a (slightly) dumbed-down version of conservative Republicans' fixation on "American exceptionalism" and Barack Obama's supposed contempt for the same.

Trump may indeed be "philosophically unmoored"—unlike Ted Cruz, he doesn't know or care enough to sprinkle his applause lines with bon mots from Ludwig von Mises or Ronald Reagan—but nobody would confuse him with, say, a liberal Democrat, would they?

According to the latest Gallup figures on party identification, the Democrats are at a post-war historic low, with just 29 percent of Americans calling themselves Dems. At 26 percent, the GOP is just one percentage point above its all-time low.

Who can blame the 45 percent of us who are now saying that we don't identify with either of the two major parties?

When you look at what each party has wrought just in the 21st century alone, the only real question is why the Dems or Reps have any members left? Separately, they pushed (among other things) Medicare expansion, Obamacare, No Child Left Behind, massive, unwarranted, and ongoing expansions in food stamps, disability spending, drone srikes, losing wars, immigration deportations, and huge piles of debt. All while demonizing the other party and only getting together every couple of years to work around spending caps that were put in place because they couldn't get it together to write and pass annual budgets.

If we are lucky as a country, we are just a few more debates away from Trump and Sanders pushing party identification into the single digits—they are the only two candidates who are throwing off any sort of energy and interest but they are also genuinely unpopular with anyone other than primary voters, who already represent a dead-end mind-set in American politics. By presenting unapologetic, cartoon versions of what their parties-of-convenience stand for, they are revealing to all of us that the Democratic and Republican parties need to reboot themselves every bit as much as the Spider-Man movie franchise does.

As currently constituted, neither party can reliably represent a country that is getting more and more socially liberal and fiscally conservative. In a word, a country that is increasingly libertarian in what it demands from government: Less intrusion into everyday life and better spending of tax dollars. If and when the parties decide they are serious about changing their platforms to better reflect more Americans, each might consider moving toward that libertarian center not for ideological reasons but for pragmatic ones. As Cato's David Boaz notes,

The Gallup Poll has a new estimate of the number of libertarians in the American electorate. In their 2015 Governance survey they find that 27 percent of respondents can be characterized as libertarians, the highest number it has ever found. The latest results also make libertarians the largest group in the electorate, as compared to 26 percent conservative, 23 percent liberal, and 15 percent populist.

We'll always have two dominant parties in the country and

at least for the forseeable future, they will be called Democrats and Republicans.

But what those parties stand for—and what sorts of people can fit comfortably in one or the other—can and will have to change if they once again want to represent more than tiny slices of the electorate.

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335 responses to “Donald Trump & Bernie Sanders Are Burning the GOP & Democratic Party To The Ground, Thank God.”

As I argue in a new Daily Beast column, Sanders and Trump aren’t leading their party in bold new directions. No, the candidates are making the parties look bad because they are presenting something close to the distilled, Platonic essences the Democratic and Republican platforms.

Are we making the argument that Sanders and Trump make politics better?

Sort of reminds me of the scene in Downfall where Hitler is observing the architects plan for the new capital of the Third Reich, and says something to the effect of “it’s a good thing the allies are bombing this area because we would have had to demolish it anyway”

If you understand why people with incurable diseases are so susceptible to quack cures then you understand the appeal of Sanders and Trump. People see the US as beomg on the road to ruin and have turned to two of the worst political quacks since Prohibition.

they are presenting something close to the distilled, Platonic essences the Democratic and Republican platforms

The platforms are the stated goals, but the Republican party exists mostly to benefit Republican party leaders, the Democratic party exists mostly to benefit Democratic party leaders. The GOP doesn’t support free markets because free markets are good, they say they support free markets becausing saying it gets them votes. The Democratic party doesn’t support gay rights because gay rights are good, they say they support gay rights because saying it gets them votes. Neither side really wants to “win” because who then would we be fighting and why would we need leaders in the fight?

If Trump and Sanders can get it through the rank-and-file voters heads that their party doesn’t really represent the voters interests but their own, it might very well make politics better. Maybe this will whack some people upside the head with the idea that you can’t rely on somebody else to take care of your thinking for you, that the very people most eager to do your thinking for you are the ones least trustworthy. Cut through all the partisan bullshit and vote for people that best represent your interests and you may come to realize the person who best represents your interests is you, and you don’t even have to campaign to get elected to the position of taking care of yourself.

Many people never realize that. “My party loves me.” My Democrat parents said that I sounded like a Republican when I was 12. I didn’t realize that I was a Libertarian until I was 22. Yeah, I voted for Carter, but who could vote for the guy that let Nixon off the hook?

No, he is ahead despite that. He is ahead because he is telling Americans that all their problems are caused by someone else that looks different from them. The same fucking thing used by every demagogue through history.

Imagine the horror of trying to organize a group of small L libertarians. The amount of antisocial contrarian behavior has to be astounding.

I am stunned every time I read about a real Reason happy hour in CA or Chicago. Fuck Tundra and I live no more than 10 miles apart and have yet to meet IRL. In fact, just knowing he is out there makes me think I need to move farther out on the prairie.

Tundra is a great guy on the boards, but what if we meet and now I have to be nice to someone I see at the local liquor store? I don’t want any such entanglements.

Right, but a libertarian hates that shit. I just want to eat my food in peaceful anonymity. I don’t want to be friends with you. Friendships invite all sorts of awkward social moments where you have to lie and make up excuses not to do stuff with people.

And not because they are dead people. They were probably progressives anyway. No, it’s because they signal the presence of a kindred spirit. She’s saying “Look, this is everything I ever wanted for us.”

Imagine the horror of trying to organize a group of small L libertarians. The amount of antisocial contrarian behavior has to be astounding.

That’s nonsense. As long as you properly have all seventeen kinds of pretzels and four hundred fifteen kinds of beer on hand, it should go great. You WERE planning on making a circle with the chairs, facing outward, weren’t you?

Because places like reason go full retard and bashed the guy, fuck you reason. Rand tried to move to the right in the primary, which I think was an error, but that’s politics. His father did better staying in the libertarian camp, which IMO would have been better for Rand, but who knows.

Probably because only republican primary voters were voting, and those people are most definitely not libertarian. I think this is part of Nick’s point- the candidates doing well in the primary are those that appeal to the most extreme people that are still left in the two parties. The other 45% of the country that can’t stand either party has no party and no primary.

If there are so many libertarian voters, how come Rand Paul didn’t do better?

Libertarians aren’t going to do well until we give people something more than just policy prescriptions and philosophical musings.

People want to identify with something bigger than themselves, something that makes them feel good in their eyes and the eyes of their friends. Most libertarians look down on those desires, but until we get over that we won’t have any response to the emotional appeal of the other parties/philosophies.

Maybe. But I think if you pushed the right buttons you’d be amazed and what people will do. If someone could credibly signal their morality to their peers by getting rid of their own free shit, I think they would do it.

People aren’t going to join a movement that takes away their free shit.

This is the laziest excuse in politics. It just assumes that everyone who can’t see a way out of the current safety net system is an irrevocable enemy. The reality is that the only true permanent enemies of smaller less-involved government are rich cronies (who usually disguise their cronyism by prattling on about free markets or capitalism or such) and bureaucrats.

For almost everyone else (including people who are currently comfortable in dependency), the problem is that most libertarians do not address the important issues that would persuade that large group of people.

1. VERY little or no talk about how the playing field itself is tilted so that the ‘free’ of free markets doesn’t exist. See – Reason avoiding talking about TPP – and for that matter Wall St. They can see right through talk of ‘terrorism’ linked to ‘NSA surveillance’. But link talk of ‘free trade’ with cronyist trade deals and you can fool Reason all the time. No surprise Sanders and Trump can monopolize this discussion – because libertarians are AWOL.

2. NO talk about the actual structural difficulties of getting from dependent poverty to independent. Friedman was the last libertarian to have an idea on this (negative income tax). For most libertarians today, this whole issue is nothing more than an opportunity to kick the poor while diverting attention to other issues.

On the rare occasions that people who know me will engage me in political discussions anymore, i enjoy pointing out that libertarianism doesn’t mean a society where everyone goes it alone Darwin-style, but a society in which everyone is free to engage with each other on their own terms.

Because most of those libertarians probably also identify as socialists, populists, Christians, agnostics, Ghibellines, and Salvadorans. The proportion of people who identify with any of a set of mutually exclusive adjectives is probably around 250%.

Because most of those libertarians probably also identify as socialists, populists, Christians, agnostics, Ghibellines, and Salvadorans. The proportion of people who identify with any of a set of mutually exclusive adjectives is probably around 250%.

Because he didn’t really follow in the footsteps of his dad. I gave his dad 856 dollars. Rand didn’t inspire me to give him anything but lukewarm support. Yeah, he’s a bit better than the other assholes.

Teachable moment. Here’s how I handle that: The “free” stuff won’t go away, you just won’t be able to get everyone else to pay for it. But you’ll have way more money in your pocket once we shrink government, so it will be easy to pay for that yourself. And you won’t be paying for other peoples’ art collecting hobbies, etc.

A common oversight. People ARE generally fiscally conservative as for what government does and taxes them for. But when everyone else is getting bennies, or when they get direct government protection like monopolies, business permits, etc, it’s only natural to want something too.

The problem is that no one will give up their benefits while others retain theirs. It would have to be everyone surrendering all benefits at once, and the politicians know how to confuse things too damned well.

At the heart is coercive monopolistic government. Once that exists, the game is over. Blaming individual people for not altruistically giving up all their benefits before everybody else is pathetic.

We are running low on politically appropriate transit-happy idiots in Vancouver area, apparently. On the other hand, Translink is such a clusterfuck of organization that I don’t think he’ll be able to do any greater damage.

Oh, I’m well aware of that (every Slav is born knowing it a) can be b) will be and c) is getting worse), just that, to fuck up more, they will have to make changes. And right now, with multiple layers of management (actual management, mayors of municipalities running it, and provincial government), it’s a beautiful deadlock. They can’t raise more revenue without provincial government, who told them to fuck off because why would they take political damage for no benefit.

In fact, if you want a Libertarian Moment story, government didn’t directly tell them to fuck off, they just asked the populace of the area do they want 0.5% sales tax increase to fund their beloved transit. Every single municipality, from rednecks in Langley to cosmos in City of Vancouver, said NO, in a beautiful display of Stated vs Revealed Preference. And this was…fourth? referendum we had since 2000, which is more than any other Canadian province got. If anyone cares, referendums were Winter Olympics in Vancouver (Yes), change voting system to preferential (No), retain harmonized Federal and Provinical sales tax (No), increase sales tax to fund transit (No). Results explain why elites deride the US primary system and are making our system ever less democratic.

I’m starting to think Nick is like one of those true believer sports fans that shows up at the Brown’s preseason games really thinking “this is the year”. Those same guys are the ones who are constructing elaborate scenarios in Week 8 showing how they can still make the playoffs.

I never expected Paul to win, but I remained hopeful that he could have grabbed enough attention to get some headlines in defense of liberty, maybe even make the eventual candidate have to make some bold promises about fiscal conservatism to drag enough Paul supporters away to win.

His absolute failure to even register on the electoral Richter Scale tells me that the country doesn’t want to hear the libertarian message at this time.

Also, I’d be careful about wanting to burn the system down. The thing that rises from the ashes isn’t usually friendly to freedom.

Also, I’d be careful about wanting to burn the system down. The thing that rises from the ashes isn’t usually friendly to freedom.

Exactly. On one side, we have Trump arguing for restrictions on the movement of people, and claims that government should do a bunch of stuff (building walls, enforcing all sorts of laws) just cheaper. On the other side, you have Bern demanding massive redistribution of wealth, socialized college and socialized healthcare. The only vaguely “libertarian” position is about the past- we should not have gone to war in Iraq. But there is very little to support the idea that Trump or Bernie will be any different from Obama or Bush who derided foreign entanglements and nation building in their candidacy only to pull an about-face during their reigns.

The question of limiting government’s reach is not being contemplated. The assumption among these insurgents is that a heavy handed government is fine as long as an outsider can wrest control from insiders. And this is a libertarian moment? Please.

As a native Clevelander, I know the sentiment well. In fact it pervades more than just sports. That city is has been in decline for half a century, and yet inexplicably so many of its citizens keep insisting it’s gonna bounce back, any day now, as they’ve been saying for decades.

Well, it’s Cleveland. What do you expect? I had to shit on the floor of a McDonald’s basement bathroom before a Rolling Stones concert because the floor was covered in human excrement. The fun part was throwing bottles at the Cleveland mounted police.

As currently constituted, neither party can reliably represent a country that is getting more and more socially liberal and fiscally conservative. In a word, a country that is increasingly libertarian in what it demands from government: Less intrusion into everyday life and better spending of tax dollars.

Double lol. I have seen no indication that our population wants a more fiscally conservative government.

Sure, they talk abstractly about “cutting waste”, but no one is talking about cutting government responsibilities. Ask all those socially liberal people whether the government should step out of marriage all together, or whether it should stay out of private contracts between cake makers and gay couples, and you will see how far off any libertarian tendencies are.

they talk about it. it just gets lost in the middle. bloated military budget, entitlements, welfare, planned parenthood….. just about every one agrees the government should spend less, they just end up getting stuck on where the spending should stop FIRST. what should be given the priority to be reduced. it is an issue that can be exploited by both sides. there are those who vote for dems, because they are sure the GOP will increase military spending, and those who vote GOP, because they hate the handouts more.

If you count people who say they are socially liberal and fiscally conservative as libertarians, you are seriously overcounting.

Because when these people have to choose between “socially liberal” (which in their mind includes entitlements, welfare, and subsidies for “liberal” projects) and fiscally conservative, they vote the liberal side every time. In practice, its all too often a long way of saying “liberal”.

When liberals say they’re fiscally conservative, they’re only talking about their own money – i.e. they pay off their credit cards in full every month. They aren’t conservative with anyone else’s money.

When liberals say they’re fiscally conservative, they’re only talking about their own money – i.e. they pay off their credit cards in full every month. They aren’t conservative with anyone else’s money.

And when they say they’re socially liberal, they are not counting most negative/natural rights among those things they are liberal about. Including the plainly stated ones in the BoR.

the link says they defined it by the answer to these two questions. (not self identification)

Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?

Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?

Also let’s not forget that if the word ‘liberal’ can cease to mean liberal and come to mean socialist, and ‘conservative’ grow to mean populist, and ‘gay’ go from meaning happy to meaning homosexual, all in but a few decades, ‘libertarian’ can just as well grow to mean totalitarian or communist or vanilla ice cream just as easily. Words mean little in the end. Just look at at how ‘People’s’ parties treat ‘the people’ to see how much labels really mean. Even if the label of ‘libertarian’ were coming into fashion, it doesn’t mean the actual idea of individual freedom isn’t on its way out of fashion.

On the Democrat side, I’m not sure it isn’t Hillary that’s out of step with her party. Bernie oozes authenticity (to honky progressive sensibilities in the Democratic Party, anyway). That’s what Democrats are responding to.

There are old stoner and doom metal bands, say Sleep and Electric Wizard . . .

Someone should tell them that (last I checked) some 75% of the hospitals in this country are non-profit.

And they’re so economically illiterate. If profit is the difference between revenue and cost, and businesses a) want to maximize profit and b) will lose customers to competitors by raising prices, then the primary way they can increase profit is by reducing costs. That’s why it costs more for the government to do anything vis a vis a private company–because the government doesn’t have the profit motive.

The people who blame high costs on the profit motive are the same people who make fun of rednecks for being ignorant. I’ve said it a hundred times before, and I’ll say it again–listening to progressives talk about how the economy works is worse than listening to fundamentalists talk about evolution.

It is much more reasonable to believe that the universe is so big and complicated that an all knowing and all powerful God must have created it all than it is to believe that Bernie Sanders is all knowing–enough that he can make qualitative and quantitative choices on my behalf about my healthcare better than I can make them for myself in a free market. Yes, progressivism is dumber than creationism.

One of the reasons so many are non-profit is because they lose so much money on Medicare and Medicaid patients, they couldn’t make a profit anyway–and being a non-profit makes it easier for them to get government support.

Problem is, they would be right to point out that competition has no such cost-diminishing effect in a monopoly or oligopoly because such scenarios lack competition. Then one points out that the state should stop enforcing or encouraging monopolies in such industries.

“That’s why it costs more for the government to do anything vis a vis a private company–because the government doesn’t have the profit motive.”

And, it should be added, because the government actually has a perverse incentive to increase costs, since the people controlling their purse strings are not their customers but a bunch of lawyers with no expertise in the activity in question. If my budget depends on Congress, my best possible option is to spend all of this year’s budget and almost meet expectations, and then swear that if they just bump it up another 4% next year everything will be great.

… And these people who want to go Dane style have never set foot in Europe, let alone live in their system. Living in France I found the country doctors were about 50 years behind the medical curve. Single payer still required you pay 30% out of pocket and even low income folks got to enjoy a 40% tax rate. To self labeled progressives the grass is always greener on the other side of the pond until the go there and realize it’s just dirt painted green.

Very accurate. Anti-immigrant, anti-trade, big government = white labor vote, which is threatened by immigrants and (incidentally) blacks. Which explains the synergy with tough-on-crime, anti-civil-liberties policies.

And Hillary is part of the Clinton’s “triangulation” strategy. The Clintons were from the “moderate” wing of the Democratic party. Clinton did welfare reform, free-trade, and telecom deregulation.

Has Reason written an article yet discussing how big of a loser and a failure at every aspect of his personal life Bernie Sanders is? The man had never had a full-time job till he became the mayor of Burlington when he was forty fucking years old.

“Gallup is finding that libertarian-minded voters now outnumber conservatives, liberals, and populists (more on that below).” “In their 2015 Governance survey they find that 27 percent of respondents can be characterized as libertarians,”

I watched some stupid GOP apparatchik over the weekend who was foaming at the mouth because Trump called the Iraq War a mistake. It was a perfect example of how the Establishment GOP completely and totally misunderstands how they have screwed the pooch and enabled Trump to get this far.

The party leaders on both sides rely on one bedrock principle, never ever admit a mistake. Clinton embodies this as does most of the GOP field. This is why the electorate is trashing them, but they don’t get it.

Every time someone uses the word “apologist” I assume they are a dishonest piece of shit who does not argue in good faith, and who judges what a person says or does based upon their political ideology instead of what they actually said or did.

But I already knew that about you.

As far as showing more concern over the GOP nominee than Gary Johnson goes, that is because one of those people stands a chance to be elected, and it isn’t Gary Johnson. It only makes sense to show more concern over the person who stands a chance to be elected, doesn’t it? Nah. You wouldn’t understand. You’re a dishonest moron.

I’m sure that Jackass is too stupid to comprehend the difference between libertarian and the Libertarian Party. Heck, he has already proven it by insisting that we’re all Republicans. To paraphrase Dave Mustaine, it gives me a migraine headache thinking down to his level. Can’t fix stupid.

I like the LP. That doesn’t mean I don’t get to root for Rand Paul, because we line up on a number of key issues to me. There’s also a few LP candidates I’m following. But to complain that reason doesn’t have daily articles about gay Jay or Peterson us pretty dumb. They aren’t debating. They aren’t making huge speeches. Maybe when the lp holds the convention we might see an article here about it.

The word “apologist” assumes that someone needs to apologize without even specifying what. It’s a textbook ad hominem. You know, that logical fallacy that leftists and morons (redundant I know) feel to be a compelling argument. The more you use the word, the more you out yourself as an emotional imbecile.

When the GOP gets something right (which is rare, but it happens), even if it offends the fragile emotions of people like Jackass, they deserve to be defended. The same thing is true for the Democrats (Principles trumping principals, something leftist cannot comprehend). The difference being that the Democrats are rarely if ever right, being that they tend to appeal to emotion instead of logic or reason.

Perhaps I wasn’t clear. The term, as it is used, implies that the “apologist” is defending something that requires an apology. Without being specific on what requires the apology, and instead focusing on who needs to apologize, it becomes an ad hominem argument.

Like Truman’s two handed economists, I have a hard time believing that we could actually be at a point of politics not as usual, and that the entrenched establishment [not many libertarians in the House or Senate, by the way, never mind State Houses…] will not just prevail because of money, blocks of constituents, or just the momentum of the ages.; on the proverbial “other hand,” just what are we going to get in the way of new, and might that not propel us all the faster toward an unknown denouement?

In other words, when does talk of revolution stop being just talk? And what are we going to wake up to and think “oh shit…”

Libertarians will never fill the power vacuum because people don’t vote for someone who says “If elected, these are the things government will stop doing.” No, people vote for someone who says “These are the new things I will make government do.” That is the libertarian conundrum. Everyone wants government to do less, but any candidate who mentions anything specific immediately alienates voters who will lose their job or entitlement (or watch close friends or family members lose their job or entitlement) as a result of the cut.

Everyone wants government to do less, but any candidate who mentions anything specific immediately alienates voters who will lose their job or entitlement (or watch close friends or family members lose their job or entitlement) as a result of the cut.

No, not everyone wants less government. But you nailed it on the rest of that.

There exists not a single mystery in my mind about Trump’s political rebelliousness; billions of bucks buys a LOT of Single Fucks Not Given. Billionaires are rarely destroyed from without and Trump is no exception to this rule.

Is Trump a legit anti-establishment force deriving his sky-brawling trajectory on rocketing powerful fucking ideas that shake the existing GOP system to its core? Nope. He’s too rich to goddamn care what the fuck you, I, or the media swarms think. Winning is the volcano burning at the core of his existence and any alteration to his existing strategy at any time is strictly related to the nimbleness required to mesh with subtly shifting demographics which have absolutely fucking nothing to do with hardcore innovative political concepts that upend current ideological reality.

Bernie has become politically wealthy by offering truckloads of free shit to the poor, depressed, and insecure which have only increased in number over the last decade. Bernie as the fearful kid/man/woman’s candidate is a predictably powerful beast in light of current economic trends and the growing sterility that flashes dimly from the anemic chatter and plastic faces of those who promote the modern progressive party.

Much as I love and applaud the fountainhead of optimism that billows from the mental spaces of our lively Gillespie Libertarianism is still crawling through the fucking muddy thicket under wet purple skies. The disaffected mainstream want nothing to do with our zest for liberty. In fact, most of them question it through slitted lids.

Ron, I’d like to see you broaden the scope and include the Democratic nominees.

Some additional Science questions: 1) Does minimum wage increase unemployment? 2) Do higher marginal tax rates reduce income mobility? 3) Does the Laffer curve exist? 4) Do you support the commercial use of space?

David Boaz is full of shit on how Gallup defines libertarians — umm, they don’t — Boaz defines us. Follow this link and see for yourself how phony he does it.. (Two questions, paragraphs 3 and 4) And Gillespie cites it!

Meanwhile, Cato’s OWN survey found the libertarian brand rejected by 91% of libertarians, according to …. David Boaz! … using a totally different definition of libertarian … whatever works best this week.,.

“In our Zogby survey we found that only 9 percent of voters with libertarian views identify themselves that way.”

Ooops. 100 – 9 = 91% rejection by libertarians! Ask any first-year Marketing student; that’s what marketers call a toxic. brand. So what’s a libertarian? Whatever works best at the time for fundraising and “proving” a libertarian moment … for any marks who actually believe there is such a moment … so will not check those two links.

Sanders has no realistic way of paying for any of his new spending. He just waves away the bill for such new spending, suggesting that one way or another, he’ll get the 1 percent to pay for it. Nobody with a room temperature IQ buys that.

What are you talking about? If we raise the income tax to take 100% of all income over $200,000/year, levy a one-time* tax on all wealth above $1million, increase corporate taxes to around 75%, introduce a slew of new employment taxes, and force all those who hold undesirable political opinions out of society, jobs will magically come back from overseas and we’ll have $15/hr minimum wage and free college and free healthcare for all!! Huzzah! #FeelTEHBernz!1

*”One-time” in no way suggests that we will levy said tax just once, or even as infrequently as once a year.

That’s why they are called retirement accounts and not regular accounts.

I responded to “retirement accounts” and even quoted them.

how about removing the tax-free muni-bond loophole?

Cities, counties, school boards, etc., would then pay higher interest on their bonds, which could increase taxes. If progressives really cared about loopholes they’d be talking about the middle-class gravy train, which is where all the loopholes are. And why the rich subsidize 40% of the entire share of personal income taxes for the core middle class, ($40k-100k). I won’t hold my breath,

Yeah. Here’s the funny part. Since his single-payer plan is cheaper than what we have now (cough, cough), simply levy a tax on employers which will be less than the employers pay now! CREATE JOBS! (cough, cough)

I had fun baiting a Bernie supporter this morning. I finally got him to say Bernie could really ramp up jobs by recognizing our rights to basic transportation by giving new automobiles to everyone driving a clunker who makes less than $50K and has at least one dependent. Oh, and said cars must be manufactured in America by workers making prevailing UAW rates! He finally found his limit when I suggested that procreation is a basic right, so the government should provide us each with a sexual partner. [Yeah, I realize some of you commenters would actually dig that benefit.]

Next time, soften it a bit by suggesting a government regulated online dating service, sort of like the Obamacare exchanges. Claim it will reduce rape on college campuses by making sure everyone is vetted. See if you can get them to support free or subsidized access.

Directly compare the rich, reviled “1%” to the 1% of people who just get laid more because they are prettier, or better at sex than others. Suggest that those people be forced to bed those of average, or below average desirability.

Directly compare work and slavery, charity and taxation, to sex and rape.

I’ve had some success in the past with this, if nothing else it makes people stop and think before rejecting the comparison. They usually reject it on the grounds that sex and pleasure is somehow more “personal” than work and income. When I tell them that I value all the fruits of my mind and body alike, including pleasure and income, they don’t know what to say. Remember that how you identify is now sacrosanct.

You’ll alienate those you could never reach anyway, and maybe get to watch their minds implode, and those you can reach will have something to think about.

Being a democrat has to do with nothing besides whether you join the Democratic party. There have been republicans who vote with the D side 90% of the time. While Bernie may technically be a democrat now (I assume he had to join the party to run in the primary), he really never has been a Democrat.

This has been long over-due. Both parties are cheerleaders for socialist slavery here in the USA only in different degrees and for different reasons. Is there a decent Libertarian candidate out there I can vote for?

If all that is true, how did Rand Paul do so dismally? At a minimum he should still be in the race. And if it’s because people who identify as libertarian aren’t voting in the GOP primary, why do supposed libertarians like Reason spend so much effort on GOP candidates? Why not build the stand alone libertarian brand through the Libertarian Party, which should do well in the general election if more people identify as libertarian.

Why? Because I think the number is BS. But if it’s true, you will put a much greater effort into Gary Johnson’s run.

Because of the constitution, we have winner takes all system, which produces a two party system.

It’s much more likely for the democrats and/or the republicans to slowly drift into more libertarian positions, then for the libertarian party to arise overnight and take them.

Democratic presidential candidates weren’t gay marriage advocates until recently, and some are drifting the libertarian way on issues like drug legalization and criminal justice reform, even if they only see the race issues. These are issues that libertarians have been consistently advocating for decades. Sure, you can point out the local team red lovers, and we can show you federal democrat politicians who’ve supported traditional marriage, drug prohibition, and love cops. No party is pure, but some are more consistent than others.

Republicans and democrats have he options to leverage their existing special interest power bases while making appeals to libertarians and independents, but libertarians, by their nature, want no such power to leverage, and will always be at a disadvantage.

If democrats love democracy so much, I think they’d be pushing for a multi-party system, and the fact that they don’t says a lot about what they think of democracy. Especially with Hillary and super delegates. And the fact they have to go outside their own party to find a canididate who reflects their love of social democracy also says a lot for how well their purely internal party democracy has been functioning.

Because Trump is even more anti-government than the Paulista Cult. You don’t think the “liberty movement” has anything to do with liberty, do you? Rand ran one of the stupidest campaigns ever. He goes to Berkeley to talk about civil liberties and non-intervention. Good. Them he pisses all that away by calling for religious tent revivals. Imagine a coalition of Berkeley students and Bible thumpers! Which is NOT libertarianism. duh.

It’s like Katherine Mangu-Ward famously said about Ron. Great on principle but sucks at politics. Reason now reports what Nolan libertarians are achieving in our culture, to (mostiy) movement libertarians who (overall) haven’t done shit and never will in the Ivory Tower. … while Reason claims credit for things they had nothing to with, as they scramble to catch up with the achievers.

Sweet, so that means, what exactly? Trump runs and wins as a Republican, is awful, and then suddenly everyone votes LP? Bernie Sanders fails to get the nomination, runs as an independent (or, heck, as a Socialist) and wins? Both parties nominate insiders and nobody votes for either one?

This is like that “libertarian moment” thing with gay marriage and weed in Colorado, isn’t it…

I think the main problem with Gallup’s sectors, and Nick’s optimism about them, is that the vast majority of people in both the libertarian and populist sectors would still flatly refuse to ever vote for anyone without the right letter beside their name. If you say you’re socially liberal and fiscally conservative but vote for 78 straight Democrats, you’re not much of a fiscal conservative, and vice versa for Republicans.

til I saw the receipt that said $6460 , I did not believe …that…my mother in law woz like they say actualy earning money in their spare time from their computer. . there aunt started doing this for under thirteen months and recently cleard the depts on there mini mansion and bourt a great Aston Martin DB5 . go to this website…

til I saw the receipt that said $6460 , I did not believe …that…my mother in law woz like they say actualy earning money in their spare time from their computer. . there aunt started doing this for under thirteen months and recently cleard the depts on there mini mansion and bourt a great Aston Martin DB5 . go to this website…

til I saw the receipt that said $6460 , I did not believe …that…my mother in law woz like they say actualy earning money in their spare time from their computer. . there aunt started doing this for under thirteen months and recently cleard the depts on there mini mansion and bourt a great Aston Martin DB5 . go to this website…

“In your dream, Donald Trump is not a fraud, In your dream, Sanders is not a fraud, In your dream,all the rest are not frauds, In your dream, Obama is not a fraud, In your dream, Reagan was not a fraud, In your dream, all the rest were not frauds,

In your dream, the constitution was not a scam, In your dream, 9/11 was not a scam…….”

45% of the country are “independents” and 27% are libertarians but for some strange reason Gary Johnson only got 1% of the vote.

Nick, people are just like politicians. They say one thing and do another. They look in the mirror and say to themselves “I believe in liberty” then support mass deportations, border walls and an expanded welfare state.

1) The wasted vote syndrome. 2) The libertarian label is rejected by 91% of those libertarians. (Zogby polling, by Cato. 3) Nick cites a Gallup poll which is reported on the Cato site but doesn’t exist. (like the libertarian moment) Catoi’s been bullshitting about polls since their Zogby poll found the fucking 91% rejection rate — by libertarians ( 58% in the Cato/Zogby poll)

The libertarians establishment has never done jack shit to even acknowledge all those libertarians. (The local level has several thousand elected libertarians). There’s not a single libertarian policy proposal on ANY major issue. “Git gummint our” is not a policy!

Yahoo CEO, Marissa Meyer has gone som far as to Support the practice “Work at home” that I have been doing since last year. In this year till now I have earned 66k dollars with my pc, despite the fact that I am a college student. Even newbies can make 39 an hour easily and the average goes up with time. Why not try this.

til I saw the receipt that said $6460 , I did not believe …that…my mother in law woz like they say actualy earning money in their spare time from their computer. . there aunt started doing this for under thirteen months and recently cleard the depts on there mini mansion and bourt a great Aston Martin DB5 . go to this website…

Start working at home with Google! It’s by-far the best job I’ve had. Last Wednesday I got a brand new BMW since getting a check for $6474 this – 4 weeks past. I began this 8-months ago and immediately was bringing home at least $77 per hour. I work through this link, go to tech tab for work detail. +_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+ http://www.incomefactory.orgfree.com

My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can’t believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do.. Clik This Link inYour Browser….

My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can’t believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do.. Clik This Link inYour Browser….

My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can’t believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do.. Clik This Link inYour Browser….

My last pay check was $9500 working 12 hours a week online. My sisters friend has been averaging 15k for months now and she works about 20 hours a week. I can’t believe how easy it was once I tried it out. This is what I do.. Clik This Link inYour Browser….

Yes, this means that a Republican token opposition candidate in Massachusetts and the Democrat token candidate in Utah will both run unopposed and win by 10 votes each, besting the Natural Law party and LP candidates who may well get 5 votes each.

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